Surimi is the name used to define a certain refined form of minced fish flesh or meat. It is not itself considered or used alone as a food stuff. It is traditionally employed as an intermediate raw material from which numerous traditional Japanese kneaded foods called "Kamaboko" are manufactured. In addition, imitation shrimp, scallop and crab meat and other meat products made from surimi.
The Japanese word "surimi" literally means "minced meat". However, the product called surimi is more than minced meat. It has very important and two major distinguishing features. These are its gel-forming capacity, which allows it to assume almost any texture desired, and its long-term stability in frozen storage, this being imparted by the addition of sugars as cryoprotectants. Other useful advantages include the possibility for control of moisture content and color and flavor retention throughout handling and storage.
When fish (meat) muscle is separated from bones, skin, and entrails, and then comminuted, it is commonly referred to as minced meat. Thus, minced fish meat becomes raw or unfrozen surimi after it has been washed to remove fat, and preferably most water-soluble constituents.
Raw surimi as above described is a truly bland material, since at least some of its flavor components are removed by the leaching process. Also, the washing isolates the fish meat's myofibrillar protein, which is insoluble in fresh water and possesses the essential gel-forming capacity so prized by the kamaboko-maker. When raw surimi is mixed with antidenaturants and frozen, the product is called frozen surimi and is so known in the commercial trade area.
The Japanese food industry has been practicing the art of manufacturing surimi for many centuries using a vareity of traditional methods for processing fish into so-called raw surimi and thereafter, converting it into finished food products.
In the past, both the fish starting material and the raw surimi deteriorated and denatured rapidly and thus became useless as food. Completely processing was necessary at the greatest possible speed.
Alaska pollock is and has traditionally been the staple raw material fish for the Japanese surimi industry. Though almost any variety of fish can be used satisfactorily to make surimi, no other species of fish has the combination of abundance, economy, and quality advantages provided by the pollock.
For instance, the five years from 1980 to 1984, an annual average of about 1.5 million metric tons of Alaska pollock was used for surimi production in Japan or on Japanese vessels. This tonnage represented about 87 percent of all the raw material fish used for surimi during that time. Thus, it can be seen that, for the current, marketplace, Alaska pollock is overwhelmingly the fish of choice.
About 1960, the possibility for making frozen surimi was discovered and this frozen product began to be exploited. This development revolutionized the entire surimi industry including the methods for making and using both the surimi and surimi based products. Tremendous expansion of the surimi industry has resulted together with modernization and ever-growing demand.
Also, kamaboko processors had been searching for a way of storing raw surimi in order to liberate the manufacturing process from fluctuations in quality and supply of raw material fish. Even if raw surimi was frozen it lost gel-forming capacity in a matter of weeks or months, and the quality was inconsistent from one lot to the next, which interferred with handling and merchandising.